The central entrance on the north front of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin, a building begun in 1680 to the design of Sir William Robinson. The previous year Arthur Forbes, 1st Earl of Granard and Marshal of the Garrisons of Ireland, had visited Paris and seen the newly-completed Invalides. He proposed to Charles II that a similar military hospital for elderly or disabled veterans be built in Dublin and the king duly commanded that this should be (work on its equivalent in Chelsea started two years later). The foundation stone was laid by then-Viceroy James Ormond, 1st Duke of Ormond and it is his coat of arms that can be seen above the doorway’s segmental pediment flanked by Corinthian pilasters. As Christine Casey has observed, the impact of this classical building on what was still essentially a mediaeval city must have been enormous: ‘It was such a sight that in 1684 a rule was introduced forbidding residents to accept gratuities from visitors who came to see it.’ Currently undergoing structural repair, since 1990 the Royal Hospital has housed the Irish Museum of Modern Art.